I've been running some tests with Lite-On's new LightScribe capable "Super AllWrite" drive, the SHM-165H6S. If you look at the first screenshot you can see that there is a dip at the 0.8GB mark. Not really a big deal considering how many dips are in graphs created by BenQ and NEC drives.

When tested with another Lite-On drive, the writing quality is fine. In fact, its actually quite good. However, when you test with a jitter sensitive drive like the DW1640, you see what that little dip is doing.

If you look below, you can see that the writing quality is excellent up until that point. After that though, the jitter jumps up considerably. As you can see, this also has a negative effect on the PI/PIF rates.

This disc was burned with HyperTuning off so that's not the cause here. The only thing I can think of is that Lite-On is using some sort of optimization to improve the writing quality. Thoughts?

And no, the results aren't this bad with all media. This was just an extreme example of what I'm seeing.

It seems like that single recalibration point is a problem with alot of media! I just don't understand how LiteON could screw a single recalibration point up so badly... in the case the scan goes from "good" to "terrible".